The details emerging of the siege at the university are horrible, they cannot be recounted and they are all over the internet. More and more details are emerging and with time, the more detailed and horrible they become.
The murderers targeted an early morning Christian Union prayer meeting; they knew exactly where the students were and they went about their abhorrent mission according to eye witness accounts almost gleefully taunting victims, making them call their parents, referencing Easter – happily executing their evil mission. In some cases the victims called out to Jesus to save them and were immediately shot dead and according to first responders they were mostly shot in the back of the head while lying on the floor.
In my mind it is crystal clear those murderers are having a reckoning with the God of the followers who they killed with ruthless abandon on April 3rd 2015. I stake my life on the certainty that it isn't a joyful reckoning.
The shock of the attack perpetuated on my country men and women follows a similar pattern to previous attacks carried out against Kenyans in the last five years.
However the attacks and the pattern of the attacks isn't unique to Kenya, East Africa or Africa for that matter. This pattern of attacks where the victims are unprepared noncombatant’s, targeted in places of education, worship or shopping isn't unique to Kenya.
These attacks depending on where they are carried out in the world target Christian’s, Muslims, Hindu’s, atheists or members of other faiths. Unfortunately and I’m not profiling here the perpetrators claiming (correctly or not) to be true Muslims, labelled Islamic radicals or terrorist (depending on who is describing them) are by and large claiming to act in the name of Islam.
The narrative of the ideologies behind the attacks changes based on which region of the world the attack is carried out in. I will illustrate:
- East Africa: unbelievers attacking Muslim lands or dispossessing Muslim are of their lands and as such are legitimate targets for the revenge being carried out by the attackers who also are on a crusade to bring the law of the Quran back to those wrongfully dispossessed Muslim lands
- West Africa: unbelievers who have perpetuated injustices against Muslims & Islam and the backup reason of establishing the rule of Islamic law in the areas that “belong” to Islam
- North Africa: Muslims against Muslims based on tribal allegiance
- Middle East: that’s where it becomes more complicated but the lines are still the same. It’s Muslim against Muslim based on the version of their religion (Sunni vs Shia) IS against the Iraqi government or IS against Yazidi Christians in that instance the narrative reverts to version 1, 2 or 3
This in turn leads to the question at least from where I’m sitting, what is the ultimate goal of these different movements in different parts of the world but executing a similar campaign of violence.
Everything has a reason and an objective – so what is the objective of these movements? Will they stop when they conquer their current adversaries? Is it simplistic to believe that they will seize when the current objective is achieved? Will Al-Shabaab seize their campaign against Kenya when as they demand Kenya withdraws her troops & for the Kenyan radicals returns “Muslim lands” to Muslims?
I don’t think that will happen, there will always be a new enemy, a new cause for the “faithful” to take up arms against the “infidel” and the violence will not stop even when the objectives that are fueling the violence are achieved.
In the event that this theory is correct then that means as
the violence continues, the more territory and people that the perpetrators take over the greater their capacity of committing violence will become – which
brings us back to Al-Shabaab who on Saturday April 4th promised to
wage a long bloody war against the population of Kenya. Their attacks in Kenya are out of a sense of desperation a campaign to regain lost territory and an economic base to wage its campaign of violence. It’s a battle born out of desperation for relevance.
Without the territory that they have lost in Somalia they continue to struggle for economic and cultural relevance in their homeland. Without the territory they have lost they will not have an economic base as well as a base of followers (plus access to the population’s contacts in foreign countries – useful when sending foreign fighters to those nations)
In conclusion – the campaign of violence seems unlikely to end: irrespective of the objectives achieved by the antagonists.
So in that context if the main proponents in each of the four regions of the world where these religious conflicts are being waged achieve their stated short term objectives it will lead to a temporary lull in the overall campaign followed by a period of consolidation of those players into bigger regional movements or supremacy conflicts from which a stronger aggressor will emerge to initiate more campaigns of violence.
To answer the question the end game is violence, followed by conquest, consolidation, expansion followed by more violence and in the unlikely event that global domination is achieved and there is no more resistance – there will still be violence – because this movement cannot exist without violence.
An aside is as long as people refuse to bow to this ideology then there will be violence, attacks, people will get hurt and there will be war and days like April 2nd 2015 will continue sadly to happen.
For those who ascribe to their ideology they seem to have committed to either convert their opponents, kill them or be killed.
What will the rest of us choose..
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